In a typical system in which a user seeks assistance, such as a self-service web portal or Integrated Voice Response (IVR) system, a user is confronted with a plurality of menu options from which to choose in order to route the user to the sought after assistance. For example, if a user telephones a financial institution, the user may be presented with the following menu: “To hear your balance, press (1), to make a payment, press (2), to initiate a transfer, press (3)”. Often, options in a menu may employ terminology that a user must interpret to navigate the menu. For example, following the scenario above, if a user selects option (3) above, “initiate a transfer”, the user may further be confronted by the options: “To initiate a wire transfer, press (4), to initiate an ACH transfer, press (5)”, which may confuse a user unfamiliar with financial terminology.
Even when a user takes time to navigate menu options, the user may nevertheless do so incorrectly. In this case, the user may wind up directed to a wrong queue, and end up talking to a person who cannot help the user or submitting a request to a system which cannot help the user. Furthermore, in some cases, menu options presented to a user do not match a problem a user is experiencing or a type of assistance a user would like. For example, following the scenario above, a user may wish to determine why a recent loan payment was not credited to a loan of the user, but there are not options in the menu above corresponding to such an inquiry. Accordingly, the user may resort to guessing which menu option to pick and fishing for how to make the inquiry.